As
a Muslim man, I am sick of our obsession with the hijab
We
must start addressing the real issue that has long been glaring at us: attitudes
towards women.
by
Ro Waseem
When it comes to the hijab, everybody seems to be obsessed
with it. More than an article of modesty, it serves as a symbol of oppression
to some and a symbol of liberation to others. But, more peculiarly, the hijab is often used as a benchmark by
conservative Muslims to judge the morality of a Muslim woman and her “Muslimness”.
Indeed, judging by the Islamic
discourse that concerns Muslim women, one would assume that the primary
religious duty of Muslim women is wearing the hijab.
The restriction of religion
from an ethical guide to appearances (dress-codes, rituals) is a curious
phenomenon; a virus that seems to have seeped its way into mainstream Muslim
consciousness. Partly due to the spread of Wahhabism,
a deeply conservative sect of Islam, our religious priorities seem to have
shifted from spiritual transformation to pedantic details about rituals and
dress codes. Thus, the fixation with the hijab,
I believe, reflects the very cursory manner in which we approach Islam.
From certain imams insisting that earthquakes are
caused by women not wearing a hijab
to muftis excommunicating Muslim
women who do not consider wearing the hijab
as a religious duty, the intellectual level of discourse that surrounds Muslim
women is excruciating, and is more or less concerned only with notions of
modesty.
This gives a gloomy insight –
the obsession with the hijab is, in
fact, a form of sexual objectification. Objectification, after all, involves
the lowering of a person to the status of an object. By reducing Muslim women
to their bodies and pretending that modesty is their primary religious duty, we
strip them of their personhood and rob them of their agency as human beings.
Take, for example, the
analogies that are employed to convince Muslim women of the benefits of the hijab. The lollipop analogy is
particularly popular among conservative Muslims on social media. Two lollipops
are shown: a bare lollipop with a swarm of flies on it and a wrapped lollipop
with flies moving away from it. The caption reads: “You cannot avoid them, but
you can protect yourself. Your Creator knows what is better for you.”
Apart from the blatant
objectification, this analogy has at its core a very troubling assumption. It
is that Muslim women who do not wear a hijab
deserve cat-calling and sexual harassment, as some sort of retributive divine
law, taking away all responsibility from men to behave morally and guard their
gaze (as mentioned in the Qur’an). Such attitudes contribute to a culture of
victim-blaming with devastating consequences for the victims involved.
Furthermore, the analogy
assumes that Muslim women who wear the hijab
are not going to be sexually harassed. This naïve assumption shatters to pieces
when confronted with evidence. According to a study carried out in Egypt, 72.5
percent of the women who reported being sexually harassed were, in fact,
wearing the hijab. And let’s not
pretend that sexual harassment does not occur in countries like Iran where
wearing the hijab is required by law.
“Growing up in a Muslim
country where the hijab is not
mandatory, I have always been told: the hijab
is there to protect women from men’s desire, because our body is awra (intimate
parts of the body that should be covered) that can spread fitna (chaos) among men,” says
Sahar, a 26-year-old non-Iranian who has been studying in Tehran for a year.
“But then I came to Iran, where hijab
is mandatory, and I am still harassed in the streets. Men aggressively stare at
me, talk to me, call me names. I feel naked, and
worthless.”
Today’s world is in a state of
emergency. With gnawing problems such as superstition, bigotry, sectarianism,
and patriarchy in Muslim-majority states, we simply cannot afford to divert all
our attention to the hijab and
pedantic details of how to worship God “correctly”. If we are at all serious
about preventing the so-called fitna, we must start addressing the real issue that has long
been glaring at us: attitudes towards women.
Education, as always, is the
key here. Not the hijab. Let’s start
getting offended by expressions like “men are going to be men” because men are
not monolithic sexual beasts who have no autonomy over their desires. Let’s not
tie down a woman’s morality to her decision to wear the hijab. And let’s stop objectifying women and seeing them primarily
as avenues for sex.
You would be amazed how far
that takes us.
Posted
November 18, 2015. This article was originally posted at The
New Statesman on November 11, 2015.